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Collops

Collops is a savory meat pie made with pork and veal collops, seasoned with spices and egg yolks, baked and filled with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Beat the pork and veal collops with the back of a cleaver.

  2. Season the pork with salt, pepper, sage, and 2 hard‑boiled egg yolks.

  3. Season the veal with cloves, mace, nutmeg, thyme, and 2 hard‑boiled egg yolks.

  4. Layer the veal and pork in a dish, starting and ending with pork.

Bake and fill

  1. Seal the pie with saffron water and the remaining egg yolks.

  2. Bake until cooked through, then let it cool.

  3. Fill the cooled pie with clarified butter.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Sage + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pork
Forms the main meat layers, giving the pie its savoury body and juiciness.
Veal
Adds a mild, tender meat layer that pairs with the pork in the filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a firm, crumbly texture to the seasoned meat.
Sage
Contributes a savoury, herbal aroma to the pork.
Clarified butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooled pie.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through, then let it cool. Pork and veal must reach a safe internal temperature to be fully cooked, and the pie must cool before the clarified butter is added so the fat is poured into a set, stable crust rather than melting away.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, veal, pepper, sage, egg, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, veal, pepper, sage, egg, clove, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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